There is debate going on right now over an economic stimulus plan to revitalize our sputtering economy. It makes sense – but they really ought to consider putting some money in the hands of people who will spend it. That would be the WalMart workers, the UPS drivers, the guy who fixes your plumbing and the lady who watches your kids so your spouse can work. Most of these people are double-taxed, once for income, and again for the “payroll tax”, a weird non-name that really means “wage penalty”.

So Senator Charles Schumer, an on-again off-again DLC liberal, has taken a stand for a tax cut for ordinary working people.

If we did the rebate based on the payroll tax, it would hit a lot more people at a lower end of the spectrum. And so to just say income taxes are the only taxes we’re considering that people pay is unfair…”

It’s a good debate to have, and it would be good to raise awareness about who pays taxes and gets no credit – working stiffs. Too bad it has to be Democrats doing our bidding – it’s like trying to stand up atop a tub of Jello, but what are our choices?

Here’s my favorite comment, from Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who said Bush “is focused on broad-based tax relief for those who are paying taxes.” You have to decode a bit – you see, the payroll tax is not considered a tax. He’s saying that any tax rebate should go only to those who pay regular income taxes, and not for payroll taxpayers. That’s how they did it in 2001 and 2003. It means 22 million families on the low end won’t see tax relief.

I’m betting here that Paulson is born into money and doesn’t know that his housekeepers and gardeners probably pay tax at a higher rate than he does. Just presuming a bit here, but I’ll bet he thinks the current zero starting tax rate on capital gains and dividends is fair, and that a 39% tax on middle class wage earners is too.

Like Rodney Dangerfield, working folks just can’t get no respect in DC. But Schumer is speaking out. Let’s hope he stands his ground, and that a few more Democrats join with him.

Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone reminds us of the essentials of presidential politics, not covered at all by the media:

Stripped of its prognosticating element, most campaign journalism is essentially a clerical job, and not a particularly noble one at that. On the trail, we reporters aren’t watching politics in action. The real stuff happens behind closed doors, where armies of faceless fund-raising pros are glad-handling equally faceless members of the political donor class, collecting hundreds of millions of dollars that will be paid off in very specific favors over the course of the net four years. That’s the real high-stakes poker game in this business, and we don’t get to sit at the table.

I feel my joints ache when I read stuff like this, from Rolling Stone Magazine In Brief notes, 1/24/08:

Paul McCartney reportedly underwent heart surgery last September in London. The singer, 65, opted for the “routine” angioplasty after complaining of feeling ill, an unidentified source told the Sun. A spokesman for McCartney declined to comment.

Stephen Stills underwent a successful operation for prostate cancer on January 3rd at a Los Angeles hospital. The singer, who just wrapped up and Australian tour with Crosby, Stills and Nash, is expected to make a completely recovery and is planning to launch a solo tour this spring.

Well, it looks like McCain is back, and I’m going to have to get used to the incessant chest beating about his captivity and torture. Here’s a small sample from a letter in today’s Bozeman Chronicle – I cut to the juicy part:

With Mitt Romney, I smell something rotten. Compare this to another candidate who spent five years tortured in a POW camp, forgave his captors, and dedicated his life to serving his country.

I guess I’ll be part of that gnarly minority who remind us that McCain was part of a bombing campaign directed at North Vietnamese cities and towns and infrastructure, and that the U.S., with McCain’s complicity, was involved in grotesque war crimes. On the day he was shot down, McCain had bombed a light bulb factory. He was rescued from drowning by the North Vietnamese, and treated as a war criminal. Which he was.

Torture is wrong, but so was McCain’s behavior, whether he was just followink orderz or not. No matter where you put the North Vietnamese on the ladder of moral superiority, put John McCain two rungs lower.

My comments follow – I think he’s wide of the mark.

Montana’s Paper Ballot System Ensures Election Day Accuracy
By: Brad Johnson, Montana Secretary of State

Montana has the cleanest, most secure elections anywhere in America. Our paper ballots give us the most reliable backup in a worst-case scenario. Our procedures prevent unauthorized tampering with ballots or equipment. Our personnel are dedicated and competent. And the counting machines we use have adequate security.

However, a recent study commissioned by the Ohio secretary of state’s office found security flaws in a large number of election machines, including three used by counties here in Montana. But none of those machines is used to actually record an individual’s vote. None of those machines is the only means of knowing what the vote count is. And none of those machines has ever failed a test for us.

Montana does not use machines to record votes. We use paper ballots as the gold standard of ballot security. Machines are only used to count those ballots.

What does that mean? It’s simple: No matter what goes wrong with the machine, come hell or high water, we will have a reliable record of every single vote cast.

The machines mentioned in the Ohio study used in Montana are the Automark ballot marking machine and the M-100 and M-650 ballot counting machines. The League of Women Voters has called for those machines to be decertified by the secretary of state’s office. In other words, those machines would no longer be authorized for use in elections here. However, because of the measures in place in Montana elections, we are not convinced this is necessary.

Each machine first meets or exceeds federal standards before ever being purchased. Shortly before the election, a number of each machine to be used, chosen at random, is tested with sample ballots. This process is open to observation. Any attempt to tamper with the machines would be detected before the count.

On Election Day, election judges again test a random sample of every machine to be used, employing a stack of sample ballots. Again, the process is open to public view. Once again, any tampering with a vote counting machine would be detected.

In the event of a recount, state law requires that results be tabulated by hand. So any attempt to tamper with the results of an election would be caught by a hand count.

Machine counts have never, not once, been shown to be inaccurate by a hand count. Even the League of Women Voters admits that there is no proof or even strong suspicion of machine counts tampering.

The Ohio study found, and the League of Women Voters is concerned about, ways in which these machines could be compromised if someone gained physical access to the machine. But Montana’s county election officials take steps to prevent that. At some point, we have to rely on people. Trained, competent people take care of and supervise the machines and keep them secure.

Montana’s election systems work. They deliver clean, accurate, fair results in every election, every year. That’s because the local election officials in all of our counties are dedicated, skilled people who are committed to the democratic process. It’s also because the Legislature requires paper ballots.

The League of Women Voters is to be commended for their dedication to clean, accurate elections. But our election systems have been tested by years of use. Tampering with them on the eve of a presidential election isn’t a good solution.

——–

That’s a good piece by Johnson, and Montana’s elections to this time have been secure, so far as I can tell. Exit polls of our results have been dead-on, and recounts have tended to reinforce official counts. Furthermore, Montana is an out-of-the-way place – presidential candidates hardly care about our three electoral votes, and our coming federal elections will probably be lopsided. The Gubernatorial race is another matter.

Still, Johnson’s piece is not totally reassuring. The prime faults with our system are three: 1) we have no control over the software that counts the votes; 2) we don’t do random audits of election results to assure accuracy, and 3) exit polls, now done by private concerns, are kept private. (Also of concern, Johnson’s statement that “trained, competent people take care of and supervise the machines and keep them secure.” More about that later.)

The scanning equipment we use to count the votes is a simple operation – the machines read and tally the pencil marks on ballots left by voters. I’m no programmer or computer geek, but I did do some BASIC programming in college, and swear I could devise a program to do such a simple operation. We’re basically looking at 1980’s technology here. The idea that this is complicated, secretive work and that patents are at risk and fortunes are at stake is absurd. The software code ought to be open for public inspection (which, in reality, translates into computer geeks poring over it looking for holes.)

That it is not, that vote-counting software is proprietary, is a gaping hole in our election security system. That Johnson places his faith in the pre-election tests is symptomatic of the credulity of election officials in blindly trusting the companies that make the equipment to behave well. Programmers could easily write code to override the results, to kick in at certain times and then self-eradicate. Such programming, wired into the memory cards that the machines depend on, could easily get past Johnson’s election day pre-tests.

And indeed, in New Hampshire, where a recount is underway, memory cards have mysteriously disappeared.

Second is the idea of audits. OK – that’s my background. I’m an accountant, and accounting, like dentistry, is best taken with a dose of nitrous oxide. But here’s the scoop: Don’t trust. Audit. Do so randomly. When a random audit turns up a problem, turn up the heat. Go in deeper, learn more.

Montana’s precincts all ought to know that there is a chance that their outcome, no matter how lopsided, might be recounted by hand. These “trained, competent people” are, after all, just people, susceptible to error and working low-paid, low-reward jobs. Furthermore, they are not generally sophisticated about how counting machines can be undermined, so their oversight is not necessarily reassuring. And local election supervisors are usually invested in their own work, and usually the last to suspect anything is wrong, the first to vigorously defend the apparent outcome.

Any company of any competence relies on oversight, and random auditing is a critical feature of any control system, The fact that we don’t have it in our elections is absurd.

Exit polling, so reliable until the arrival of the Bush family, is nothing more than an audit tool. It ought to be financed by taxpayers, as we are the ultimate auditors of our own results. Other countries, like Germany, do exit polling publicly and as a matter of course. In our country, it is done privately, the the results are kept secret. We know that the exit polls in New Hampshire don’t support Hillary’s surprise win. Why? Two reporters slipped up and told us so. Exit polling ought to be, like random audits, part of the election verification system. That it isn’t is, again, absurd.

And finally, I ask and don’t know the answer, who are these “trained, competent people” that Johnson talks about? Are they public employees? One would hope so – one of the problems that states like Ohio and Florida and New Hampshire have had is that supervision of elections is done by private companies. Employees of these companies have enjoyed free access to the counting machines right up until the election – they have been free to insert last-minute patches and replace memory cards. It’s a travesty.

A secure election system will rely on paper ballots as the ultimate source of the vote count. Because of sheer volume, we must use scanning equipment to count the votes. The software used on these machines and their memory cards must be open to public inspection, and the machines themselves kept under lock and key with recorded access only by publicly supervised and authorized officials until election day. Pre-election tests should be run by government employees before the public uses the machines. After the elections, the state should conduct random audits of various results as a control check. The state might as well, while they are at it, conduct exit polls – a further audit check on reliability of results.

Montana does some of these things, but not all of these things. Until Montana does all of these things, our elections are not secure. Johnson has done what would be expected of a man in his position – he attempts to assure us of the integrity of the system. He fails.

PS: It ain’t so bad here as in South Carolina, where a primary will be conducted this week and next week. There they have no paper trail to verify results. None. They are entirely dependent on the machines. It is high comedy.

Bev Harris of Black Box Voting is playing a game of cat and mouse with New Hampshire officials in the current recount. Odd things are happening – the sealed boxes that carry the ballots in them have slits in them when they arrive for counting, large enough to add and remove ballots. Stacks of boxes are left sitting out at an unprotected site without guard instead of being put in a vault, and then everyone is told to leave the building overnight – no one is allowed to stand watch. Harris is doing all she can, videotaping everything she can, so officials have told her they won’t allow videotaping for some lame excuse.

Two people are sitting in jail, or have served their eighteen month sentences, for interfering with the Ohio recount after the 2004 debacle. Could New Hampshire officials be next behind the padlocks?

Honestly, the system needs transparency – if it was a clean election, officials should welcome a recount and assure all of us that it is being done according to Hoyle. This would include sealed containers, legal chain of custody, state police standing guard, and full video taping of all the procedures.

Something is rotten. No surprises here. Anyway, see below for one machine that failed in its performance. If one machine failed, then all are suspect. That is reason enough for no confidence in the outcome. The pre-election poll disparity, apparent exit poll disparity, and differences between hand-counted and Diebold-counted results, are all cause to suspect that once again, we’ve been hacked.

Here’s what Senator Russ Feingold has to say about John Edwards:

The one that is the most problematic is (John) Edwards, who voted for the Patriot Act, campaigns against it. Voted for No Child Left Behind, campaigns against it. Voted for the China trade deal, campaigns against it. Voted for the Iraq war … He uses my voting record exactly as his platform, even though he had the opposite voting record.

Diebold Count:

Clinton 683
Edwards 255
Obama 404

Total 1,342

Hand Count:

Clinton 619
Edwards 217
Obama 365

Total 1,211

Says New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner, “”We did nine of the 12 wards in Manchester, and a lot of the votes were exactly the same,” Gardner said. “Some went up by a vote or two.”

Forget everything – everything about conspiracies and Republicans controlling the vote count and wanting a Hillary victory and the fact that memory cards are missing – all of that. Can we at least expect the machines to do an accurate count? Can we at least expect basic competency?

I found this YouTube fascinating – how three guys made that incredible beach scene in Saving Private Ryan.

PS – got the link from Dr. Peter Rost.

Glenn Greenwald mixed it up with CNN’s John King. Greenwald criticized King for doing an adulating interview of John McCain, and King fired back (reprinted in full at Greenwald’s Salon.com blog). Greenwald’s response to King’s response is one of the better dissections of modern political coverage I’ve read in some time.

Excerpts:

Most of [King’s response] speaks for itself, but it’s worth noting how often journalists’ responses to criticisms contain so many of the same elements which King’s email contains. They always want you to know that they never read what you write and that you’re an Unserious, biased, partisan amateur (without any recognition of the glaring contradiction between those two claims).

They boast of what they believe to be their reputation, assuring you that they are widely respected and admired by the People Who Count. Even though they never read you, they’re repulsed by the idea that you would dare to critique their work because you know absolutely nothing about the High Art of Journalism and never get any messages on your Blackberry from Ed Gillespie or Karl Rove or Anyone.

Have you ever noticed how haughty journalists get when they confront their critics? Mind you they seldom confront critics – they’re too busy handing out awards to one another. Permit me to analyze this: They are hypersensitive to criticism because on some level they know they are sucking it up. They don’t confront powerful people, they don’t do follow-ups questions, and offer floral bouquets instead. That is – unless your name is Dennis Kucinich or some other schmuck – they do get tough when they are dealing with the class geek.

They invariably point to criticisms from both Left and Right as proof that they’re unbiased straight-shooters.

Journalists love this fallback – it’s tactical avoidance. It permits them to ignore the criticism and carry on. In King’s case, Greenwald got after him for kissing up to McCain. King’s response: Well, there was one time when a guy got after me because I wasn’t tough enough on Hillary. Or something like that. Anything but deal with the actual criticism.

They proudly inform you that there have, indeed, been some instances over the many decades that they’ve been working when they’ve stood up to someone and asked something other than mindlessly reverent questions, and if you had looked hard enough, you might have found a couple. They tell you it’s appalling to comment on what they publish to their readers or viewers without first talking to them about it, even though you linked to or even printed in full everything they said and wrote. And they close by telling you that you have no standards, no ethics, no understanding of their Complex Profession, and no decency — that you’re just a shrill, ignorant partisan pushing a lowly agenda while they are in the business of Real Unvarnished, Objective Reporting.

We simply don’t understand journalism. The Daily Show does.

Stewart : Here’s what puzzles me most, Rob. John Kerry’s record in Vietnam is pretty much right there in the official records of the U.S. military, and hasn’t been disputed for 35 years.
Corddry : That’s right, Jon, and that’s certainly the spin you’ll be hearing coming from the Kerry campaign over the next few days.
Stewart : That’s not a spin thing, that’s a fact. That’s established.
Corddry : Exactly, Jon, and that established, incontrovertible fact is one side of the story.
Stewart : But isn’t that the end of the story? I mean, you’ve seen the records, haven’t you? What’s your opinion?
Corddry : I’m sorry, “my opinion”? I don’t have opinions. I’m a reporter, Jon, and my job is to spend half the time repeating what one side says, and half the time repeating the other. Little thing called “objectivity”—might want to look it up some day.
Stewart : Doesn’t objectivity mean objectively weighing the evidence, and calling out what’s credible and what isn’t?
Corddry : Whoa-ho! Sounds like someone wants the media to act as a filter! Listen, buddy: Not my job to stand between the people talking to me and the people listening to me.

John McCain said that going on the Daily Show is a “dangerous experience.” That is, oddly, because the Daily show, in it’s own quirky way, is doing journalism.

Wait! Did I say that? I obviously don’t understand what journalism is. Greenwald:

Ponder how much better things would be if establishment journalists — in response to being endlessly lied to and manipulated by political officials and upon witnessing extreme lawbreaking and corruption at the highest levels of our government — were able to muster just a tiny fraction of the high dudgeon, petulant offense, and melodramatic outrage that comes pouring forth whenever their “reporting” is criticized.

Indeed.